Kids behind bars

THE WORLD got a close-up look of one of our jails this week, courtesy of a short clip produced by ITV and shown on CNN during their hourly newscasts. The feature didn't put us in a good light, exposing the squalor of the prison and, worst of all, child prisoners.

Late last year Ditsi Carolino released her documentary film "Bunso," following three children who had been in and out of jail. A few months later, in April, Newsbreak magazine had a cover story about the children in prison, accompanied by stark, grim and heartbreaking photographs.

"Bunso," the Newsbreak articles and photographs have all been powerful, but haven't quite been able to spark outrage from the public. I remember feeling very depressed after reading the Newsbreak issue at the airport, and making a mental note to write about the child prisoners in my column. I never got around to it ... maybe because I've been getting such an overdose of similarly depressing information from research I've been doing in urban poor communities.

Rose, 5

The CNN short feature brought back the haunting images, this time with a more international dimension. Citing Unicef, CNN says that worldwide there are about a million children held in adult prisons in some 192 countries that have signed an agreement that prohibits this practice. In the Philippines alone, we have 20,000 of these child prisoners. The CNN feature showed several of these children, often malnourished and with festering wounds and infections. Some of the wounds show not on their skins but in their eyes, the mental torment snuffing out hope.

The documentary featured Fr. Shay Cullen, an Irish Columban priest who started a local campaign to free child prisoners after he discovered Rose, a 5-year-old girl, in prison. On the CNN feature, he talked about children mixed with pedophiles.

More than the pedophiles though, the problem is that the children are thrown into jail with hardened criminals, transforming the prisons into "colleges for crime." Rather than reforming, the kids are bound to become as hardened as their older mentors.

Why haven't we moved on this issue? Deep down, I worry that it isn't just a matter of not caring, but of thinking all this is normal: "Hey, these are kids but they're thugs, and they steal and sell drugs. They deserve to be in jail." It's part of an older, more conservative perspective that emphasizes discipline and corporal punishment in the molding of children: no pain, no gain.

The horrors inflicted on children, in the name of discipline, are endless. In Indonesia, children as young as 8 can be tried in adult courts. In Pakistan, children of age 12 can be executed.

And when all these punitive measures fail, rather than recognizing the futility of these "solutions," people look for even more drastic measures. In Brazil, right-wing vigilante groups have taken it upon themselves to exterminate street children as their way of cleaning up society.

Better than the streets

One of the child prisoners interviewed on the CNN documentary said that he preferred being in jail, where he was at least fed. The CNN clip then featured life outside: children sniffing glue under bridges, scavenging for a living. If this is the life out in the "free" world, certainly jail can seem more attractive.

The theme repeats Carolino's "Bunso." The mother of Anthony, one of the lead characters in the film, tells him that he's better off in jail because he's safe from his alcoholic father, who's always beating him up.

The child prisoners force us to confront so many of the contradictions we have with our morality. We tell our children to be moral, but have few role models to offer. We tell them not to be materialistic, yet we allow a proliferation of advertising on billboards, on television, targeting the young, urging them to partake of a "good life." I've interviewed kids in urban poor communities who describe their craving for these consumer goods as addictions (maybe picked up from Smart Communications' "Addict Mobile" campaigns). They reason that if society advertises these products so heavily, if "Ate Kris" ["Elder Sister" Kris Aquino] says product X is really cool, then they're entitled to that product as well.

Some of the kids steal food to survive. Others go for more expensive stuff: cell phones, clothes. "Bunso's" Anthony says his biggest heist involved P90,000 worth of goods. Perhaps he was bragging, but it shows us, too, how machismo's involved in the shaping, or should we say, warping of a child.

What always strikes me when I interview street "thugs," especially the young ones, is that amid the vulgarities and cursing and tough facades, many are quite soft inside. I've met mama's boys and doting "kuya" [elder brothers] caring for their younger siblings. Most of them are incredibly soft-spoken. They're generous to a fault: when they land a windfall, the money disappears in a day or two because they spend it all on their friends and family. Some will insist, as Anthony does, that they only steal from the rich.

But how long can the reservoirs of kindness and goodness last? Life on the streets and in prison quickly turns them cynical. Prisons hasten the process and I suspect it's because even as they apprentice themselves to the most hardened thugs, these kids know their mentors are small fry like themselves, compared to the big ones who run around scot-free, the Very Important People who can't be touched, the ones addressed as "Honorable."

Racing against time

It's easy to feel helpless watching films like "Bunso" or the CNN short clip. What, really, can we do? Should we write our officials? They probably wouldn't care less. There's no political mileage to be gained siding with child "criminals."
I'm appealing to my friends in medical and nursing schools to check if there are child prisoners in their own cities, and to work out medical services for the kids. More importantly, though, they should ask why they're in jail in the first place, and help look for alternatives, arranging for their transfer to juvenile centers, or even freed. Many are held without investigation, much less a court hearing.

I'd check out the juvenile centers as well. I've interviewed "graduates" of these institutions and they say that there are dangers too being with other "kids." I've heard of 16-year-olds in some of these institutions raping 12- or 13-year-olds.
If we can't work directly on the jails, then we need to raise public awareness about this issue. "Bunso" and the CNN clip need to be shown more widely, especially in schools, followed by discussions that go beyond the jails and ask about the conditions that lead to child prisoners.

It's a race against time with these kids. Of the three boys featured in "Bunso," two have died -- one in a vehicular accident while the other, who had turned to drugs, died handcuffed to his hospital bed.